Being a long-time defender of "open borders,"
I have a question I've been fairly
dying to ask those on the opposite side of the divide:
Do the reasons that
grant government the power to identify and repel foreign "undesirables,"
also grant it the power to identify and expel domestic ones?
Simply put:

If you are anti-immigration,
are you also pro-expatriation?

Consider the possibilities. Neo-con ex-Governor Pete Wilson (R-CA)
wanted to ward off immigrants because he feared that they'd go on welfare and
other relief programs.
But what about our own welfare queens?
If the point
is to keep all moochers out of the country, where is the logic in letting
any stay inside?
If the problem with "people on welfare" is the people and
not the welfare, wouldn't it then make sense just to exile everybody,
native as well as alien, who receives welfare -- up to and including subsidized CEOs?
Wouldn't that solve any problem with the number of recipients?

Paleo-con magazine National Review opposes further
immigration because it's convinced that contemporary immigrants almost
inevitably become Democratic voters.
Ergo, if the objectionable element is
a demographic group that preponderantly supports the Democrats, wouldn't
right reason enjoin Buckley & Co. to propose the expulsion of blacks and
Jews? (I have to be careful here: One man's reductio ad absurdum could
become one madman's idée fixe.)

Faux-con editor Michael Lind (Harper's)
wishes to block the entry of foreign unskilled laborers in order to
maintain low-end wage rates. If that's the game, then why not force the
exit of some American unskilled laborers in order to jack up wages even
higher for the lucky few left?

Mr. Lind doth protest much in his attempt to distinguish his
anti-immigrationism from those of other known conservatives -- and we can
understand why. Recon theologian (and false Y2K prophet) Gary North gives
his blessing to the faithful "work[ing] politically to cut off
[non-Christian] immigration as part of their goal of establishing a
Trinitarian confession for the nation."
Will he presently conclude that
that goal correspondingly requires the "politically"-effected exodus of the
non-Christians here (and the First Amendment along with them)?
That
possibility should be of no small concern to Judeo-con columnist Don Feder
(Boston Herald),
who himself has the chutzpah to insist that today's
non-European immigrants will never assimilate into mainstream culture,
not like such earlier immigrants as... the Ashkenazic Jews (his forebears). If
he would bar those peoples who he arbitrarily predicts will never
assimilate,
would he boot those who have thoroughly demonstrated their
inability/unwillingness to ever do so, such as... the ultra-Orthodox
Hasidim?
Mr. Feder fears something else from immigrants -- secession: What
if "50 million Mexicans chose to move to California and Texas [and] these
new Americans (then constituting a majority in the states where they
settle) wanted to secede and unite the territory with Mexico[?]" I don't
know: What if all them good ol' boys still wavin' the Stars and Bars ever
grew into a majority that then wanted to secede and resurrect the
Confederacy?
If prevention of secession is grounds for holding Paco South
of the Border,
is it also grounds for shipping Bubba there?
Anglo-con
writer Peter Brimelow, the immigrant author of the anti-immigrant Alien
Nation, warns that the danger posed by "immigrants" is that they "break
down white America's sense of identity."
Oh. Well, if we shouldn't allow
non-whites in for fear of weakening white racial solidarity, should we
throw them out in the hopes of strengthening it?
But surely the Oscar in
this category goes to anarcho-con economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, another
anti-immigration immigrant. Now follow the reasoning here. Whenever the
government grants immigrants access to compulsory public institutions
(e.g., the schools), it violates the freedom of association of natives who
don't want to integrate with foreigners. Therefore, as long as public
education (like public assistance) remains an absolute, the freedom-loving
anti-statist can, in good conscience, support the State's restricting of
free immigration. The question almost irresistibly asks itself: If the
government must keep out people you don't want your children sitting next
to in class -- say, Zulus or Koreans -- must it similarly kick out other
people you also don't want them sitting next to -- say, Navajos or Lakotas?

It would be comforting to think that such delirium is confined to
the
fever swamps of the American Right. Alas. Many in the civil rights
community -- Coretta Scott King and the Black Leadership Forum, for example
-- accuse immigrant browns of taking work away from resident blacks. Fine,
so the U.S. won't admit anyone who could compete in the job market. Better
yet, it will banish everyone who isn't of African descent, leaving more
than enough jobs open for everyone who is.
There you have it: Ethnic
cleansing in the name of racial equality.
But outdoing even that is the
view held by such environmentalists as perennial doomster Paul Ehrlich and
a significant faction within the Sierra Club.
For them, the movement of
population from the less-developed nations to industrial America means only
more people consuming more resources and creating more pollution. But would
just closing America's borders forestall global ecological disaster?
Wouldn't the green thing to do be to have the U.S. and all the other
industrial nations drive the entirety of their populations into the
jungles, deserts and tundras of the world? Fancy that: Khmer Rouge
primitivism on an international scale. Maybe Pol Pot can now truly rest in
peace, knowing that there're still those who share his vision.

Support for mass expatriation is the perversely perfect flip side of
the
opposition to mass immigration. If we ever really took seriously the ideas
justifying that opposition, not only would we not have anybody coming to
America, we wouldn't have anybody left in America. Yes, we are very much a
"nation of immigrants" -- our real "sense of identity" -- which is exactly
why ending immigration would be nothing less than a collective act of
self-negation.